שִׁלְשֹׁם
heretofore
‘heretofore’ is one of 2 main senses fuller range ↓
Full lexicon entry — Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
From Brown-Driver-Briggs (BDB)
Where this word appears
Grammar key — what these labels mean
Part of speech
- Noun
- A naming word — a person, place, thing, or idea.
- Adverb
- A word that modifies a verb, adjective, or other adverb.
Noun type
- Common
- A common noun — a general class of person, place, or thing (“king,” “city,” “water”), not a specific name.
State
- Absolute
- The independent form of a noun, not bound to a following word.
Gender
- Masculine
- Grammatically masculine.
Number
- Singular
- One.
Grammatical forms
- Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute 18 times (72%)
- Adverb 7 times (28%)
Parsed forms decoded from the imported morphology (morphhb / Westminster Leningrad Codex — WLC text public domain, morphhb tagging CC BY 4.0), counted across 25 parsed occurrences — not distinct verses.
Every verse where H8032 appears — 25 distinct verses across 10 books. Click any verse to open its interlinear word-by-word view. Verse text shown in the World English Bible for context — . Each verse’s Hebrew form is shown with its reference; the English is not keyword-highlighted, since the data carries no word-level English alignment. Use “Compare translations” on any verse to read it across multiple English versions. This concordance covers the Hebrew Bible; Septuagint (Greek Old Testament) occurrences are not indexed here.
Genesis 2 verses
Exodus 6 verses
- Exodus 4:10 מִ/שִּׁלְשֹׁ֔ם prep + adv Moses said to Yahweh, "Oh, Lord, I am not eloquent, neither before now, nor since you have spoken to your servant; for I am slow of speech, and of a slow tongue."
- Exodus 5:7 שִׁלְשֹׁ֑ם adv "You shall no longer give the people straw to make brick, as before. Let them go and gather straw for themselves.
- Exodus 5:8 שִׁלְשֹׁם֙ adv The number of the bricks, which they made before, you require from them. You shall not diminish anything of it, for they are idle; therefore they cry, saying, 'Let us go and sacrifice to our God.'
- Exodus 5:14 שִׁלְשֹׁ֔ם adv The officers of the children of Israel, whom Pharaoh's taskmasters had set over them, were beaten, and demanded, "Why haven't you fulfilled your quota both yesterday and today, in making brick as before?"
- Exodus 21:29 שִׁלְשֹׁ֗ם adv But if the bull had a habit of goring in the past, and it has been testified to its owner, and he has not kept it in, but it has killed a man or a woman, the bull shall be stoned, and its owner shall also be put to death.
- Exodus 21:36 שִׁלְשֹׁ֔ם adv Or if it is known that the bull was in the habit of goring in the past, and its owner has not kept it in, he shall surely pay bull for bull, and the dead animal shall be his own.
Deuteronomy 3 verses
- Deuteronomy 4:42 שִׁלְשׁ֑וֹם n c ms that the manslayer might flee there, who kills his neighbor unawares, and didn't hate him in time past; and that fleeing to one of these cities he might live:
- Deuteronomy 19:4 שִׁלְשֹֽׁם n c ms This is the case of the manslayer, that shall flee there and live: whoever kills his neighbor unawares, and didn't hate him in time past;
- Deuteronomy 19:6 שִׁלְשֽׁוֹם n c ms lest the avenger of blood pursue the manslayer, while his heart is hot, and overtake him, because the way is long, and strike him mortally; whereas he was not worthy of death, inasmuch as he didn't hate him in time past.
Joshua 3 verses
- Joshua 3:4 שִׁלְשֽׁוֹם n c ms Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits by measure: don't come near to it, that you may know the way by which you must go; for you have not passed this way heretofore.
- Joshua 4:18 שִׁלְשׁ֖וֹם n c ms It happened, when the priests who bore the ark of the covenant of Yahweh were come up out of the midst of the Jordan, and the soles of the priests' feet were lifted up to the dry ground, that the waters of the Jordan returned to their place, and went over all its banks, as before.
- Joshua 20:5 שִׁלְשֽׁוֹם n c ms If the avenger of blood pursue after him, then they shall not deliver up the manslayer into his hand; because he struck his neighbor unawares, and didn't hate him before.
Ruth 1 verse
1 Samuel 5 verses
- 1 Samuel 4:7 שִׁלְשֹֽׁם n c ms The Philistines were afraid, for they said, God is come into the camp. They said, Woe to us! for there has not been such a thing heretofore.
- 1 Samuel 10:11 שִׁלְשׁ֔וֹם n c ms It happened, when all who knew him before saw that, behold, he prophesied with the prophets, then the people said one to another, What is this that is come to the son of Kish? Is Saul also among the prophets?
- 1 Samuel 14:21 שִׁלְשׁ֔וֹם n c ms Now the Hebrews who were with the Philistines as before, and who went up with them into the camp, [from the country] round about, even they also [turned] to be with the Israelites who were with Saul and Jonathan.
- 1 Samuel 19:7 שִׁלְשֽׁוֹם n c ms Jonathan called David, and Jonathan showed him all those things. Jonathan brought David to Saul, and he was in his presence, as before.
- 1 Samuel 21:5 שִׁלְשֹׁ֔ם n c ms David answered the priest, and said to him, Of a truth women have been kept from us about these three days; when I came out, the vessels of the young men were holy, though it was but a common journey; how much more then today shall their vessels be holy?
2 Samuel 2 verses
- 2 Samuel 3:17 שִׁלְשֹׁ֔ם n c ms Abner had communication with the elders of Israel, saying, In times past you sought for David to be king over you:
- 2 Samuel 5:2 שִׁלְשׁ֗וֹם n c ms In times past, when Saul was king over us, it was you who led out and brought in Israel: and Yahweh said to you, You shall be shepherd of my people Israel, and you shall be prince over Israel.
2 Kings 1 verse
1 Chronicles 1 verse
Proverbs 1 verse
About this entry
At a glance — auto-summarized from this page’s data, not written by a person. Every figure links to its source below. This summary describes the numbers; it doesn’t interpret them.
“heretofore” is the headline sense of the Hebrew verb שלשום (shilshôwm). Older and newer Bibles part ways — “past” in the King James Version, “third day” (unfoldingWord Literal Text) in modern versions. See the renderings breakdown. It turns up in 25 verses across 10 books, an uncommon footprint. Its earliest occurrence is Genesis 31:2. Lexicons map it across 2 senses. See the sense tree, 25-verse concordance, and the renderings breakdown below.
Gloss history
Strong's 1890 vs modern scholarship
About this word
Strong's H8032 catalogs a Hebrew word from the Hebrew Old Testament.
These counts are not copied from any lexicon or concordance. They are computed here, from the morphology-tagged Hebrew Old Testament. What Lemma adds →
- 25
- distinct verses
- The word appears in 25 distinct verses.
- 10 / 39
- OT books
- The word appears in 10 of 39 Old Testament books.
- #1,282
- by frequency
- Top 2500 most frequent Hebrew words (rank 1,282 of 8,640 Hebrew words by occurrence).
View all 25 occurrences in the concordance →
Most concentrated in
- Exodus 6 verses 24%
- 1 Samuel 5 verses 20%
- Deuteronomy 3 verses 12%
By section of the Old Testament
By traditional corpus
Conventional, traditional groupings — biblical authorship is debated, so this is a traditional corpus grouping, not an authorship claim. Each share is this word’s portion of its verses in that division of the Hebrew canon. Each figure is a share of the word’s 25 distinct verses.
- Torah (Pentateuch) 11 verses · 44%
- Prophets (Nevi'im) 11 verses · 44%
- Writings (Ketuvim) 3 verses · 12%
How translations render this word
Counts come from each version’s own published word-to-Strong’s tagging or interlinear alignment — an approximate guide to how each version renders this word, not a word-level alignment the data otherwise carries. Because each total is that version’s own tagged count, the per-version totals vary from one another and need not match the appearance or distinct-verse counts above. These counts may also differ from a printed concordance because Lemma counts each distinctly tagged rendering and does not collapse phrase taggings into a single head-word total. This is a fixed set of word-tagged versions (KJV, ASV, BSB, ULT) and does not change with the reading translation you choose elsewhere. Each version’s license is shown beside its name below (and on Sources).
- King James Version: Past 5×, Heretofore 4×, Before 2×
- American Standard Version: Past 5×, Heretofore 4×, Beforetime 2×
- Berean Standard Bible: Times past 2×
- unfoldingWord Literal Text: Third day 9×, Day before yesterday 3×, Or the third day 3×
King James Version Public Domain
Renders H8032 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 9 further occurrences.
American Standard Version Public Domain
Renders H8032 across 16 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 5 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Berean Standard Bible Public Domain
Renders H8032 across 5 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings. Not rendered by a distinct English word in 20 further occurrences.
unfoldingWord Literal Text CC BY-SA 4.0
Renders H8032 across 24 tagged occurrences — most commonly:
Plus 3 renderings that appear only once — usually multi-word phrases or single function words the recovered tagging swept in, not distinct renderings.
Senses in BDB
The 2 senses BDB distinguishes for this word, in lexicon order (not ranked by frequency or importance). The full entry — with sub-senses — is in the Lexicon Entry tab.
- day before yesterday, three days ago
- an idiom for 'heretofore in times past'
Word origin
and (less often) שִׁלְשׁוֹם 25 adv. = three days ago, specif. day before yesterday (Köii. 1. 255 f. LagBN 20 Anm. BaNB § 216b);—in phr. תְּמוֹל שׁ׳ Ex 5:8 yesterday (and) day before, idiomat. for hitherto, so Ru 2:11, אֶתְמוֹל שׁ׳ 1 S 4:7; כִּת׳ שׁ׳ Gn 31:2, 5 (E), Ex 5:7, 14 (J), 2 K 13:5, cf. 1 S 14:21; 19:7; גַּם־ת׳ גַּם־שׁ׳ Ex 4:10 (J), 2 S 3:17; 1 Ch 11:2, cf. 2 S 5:2; מִתּ׳ שׁ׳ from aforetime, previously Ex 21:29, 36 (E), Dt 4:42; 19:4, 6; Jos 4:18 (J), 3:4; 20:5 (both R), cf. 1 S 10:11; כִּת׳ שׁ׳ 1 S 21:6 as formerly (but Bu מִתּ׳ שׁ׳ = for some days).—שׁ׳ Pr 22:20 Kt is difficult; Qr שָׁלִשִׁים (v. iii. שָׁלִישׁ) is imposs.; supply perhaps תְּמוֹל have I not written to thee heretofore, etc.?
— Brown-Driver-Briggs (Oxford 1906, public domain), digitized via Sefaria, supplemented by the OpenScriptures HebrewLexicon (CC BY 4.0). See Sources.
Derived from שלש (Shelesh) (H8028) — Shelesh.
Forms in the corpus
The 12 distinct written forms H8032 takes in the Hebrew Bible, most frequent first — each parse links to that state’s occurrences in the concordance. Hebrew forms include their vowel points and cantillation, so a single lemma takes many written forms.
| Form | Parsing | Example | Uses |
|---|---|---|---|
| שִׁלְשֽׁוֹם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 19:6 | 7 |
| שִׁלְשֹׁ֔ם | Adverb | Exodus 5:14 | 4 |
| שִׁלְשֹׁ֑ם | Adverb | Exodus 5:7 | 2 |
| שִׁלְשׁ֔וֹם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Samuel 10:11 | 2 |
| שִׁלְשׁ֗וֹם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | 1 Chronicles 11:2 | 2 |
| שִׁלְשֹֽׁם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 19:4 | 2 |
| מִ/שִּׁלְשֹׁ֔ם | Adverb | Exodus 4:10 | 1 |
| שִׁלְשׁ֑וֹם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Deuteronomy 4:42 | 1 |
| שִׁלְשׁ֖וֹם | Noun, Common, Masculine, Singular, Absolute | Joshua 4:18 | 1 |
| שִׁלְשֹׁ֗ם | Adverb | Exodus 21:29 | 1 |
| שִׁלְשֹׁם֙ | Adverb | Exodus 5:8 | 1 |
| שלשום | Adverb | Proverbs 22:20 | 1 |
Same root — word family
Other BDB entries built from the same root as H8032, grouped by Strong’s listed origin. These share a root / origin per the lexicon — not necessarily a shared meaning. Each links to that word’s own entry.
Derives from
Proper names from this root
People and places named from this root — a name, not an additional meaning of the word.
Compare all same-root words → 2 of the same-root words are proper names (people or places). They share a root, not necessarily a meaning.
Septuagint verse parallels
This word appears in 25 verses that also exist in the Greek Old Testament (Septuagint), out of the 25 Hebrew verses it occurs in. You can read those verses in Greek by switching the Old Testament edition to the Septuagint.
Read these verses in the Septuagint
- Genesis 31:2
- Exodus 4:10
- Deuteronomy 4:42
- Joshua 3:4
- Ruth 2:11
- 1 Samuel 4:7
- 2 Samuel 3:17
- 2 Kings 13:5
- 1 Chronicles 11:2
- Proverbs 22:20
This is a verse-level parallel only — the same verses exist in both the Hebrew and Greek Old Testaments. No word-level Hebrew↔Greek correspondence is claimed: the data carries no such alignment, so no Greek word is shown as this Hebrew word’s translation. Coverage is not total — the Septuagint omits the deuterocanon and renumbers the Psalms, so some Hebrew verses have no direct Greek parallel.
